During the Christmas season, Kentucky Fried Chicken has become a massive hit in Japan, drawing lines around the block and generating significant sales.
According to Fox News, Japanese YouTuber Yoko Ishii gave them an inside peek into how the fast-food restaurant developed over the previous 50 years into a holiday phenomenon.
KFC Japan experiences its highest yearly sales figures in the weeks leading up to Christmas. According to the company’s website, December 24 was the chain’s “busiest day of the year — 10 times busier than KFC Japan’s annual average.”
Ishii claimed that both she and her husband had seen the long lineups in their hometown of Fukuoka on separate occasions.
“I was walking home, and I saw KFC inside of the big [train] station nearby, and I saw the line,” Ishii said in an interview with Fox News. “I was wondering, ‘What’s happening?'”
“I realized that they were lined up for Kentucky for Christmas,” she added.
In 1970, the American food brand KFC opened its first location in Japan. Four years later, it introduced its first holiday-themed advertising campaign.
Ishii claimed that because she grew up seeing the tagline aired on TV, she was familiar with Kentucky for Christmas.
KFC’s website says the campaign was inspired by an unknown foreigner who went to a KFC restaurant on Christmas Day in Tokyo at some point in the early 1970s.
“I can’t get turkey in Japan, so I have no choice but to celebrate Christmas with Kentucky Fried Chicken,” the customer stated, per KFC’s account.
“A team member on the KFC Japan sales team overheard the remark and used it as inspiration to launch the first Christmas campaign and its tagline — Kentucky for Christmas.”
Christmas Promotion
Furthermore, KFC’s website says the first Christmas dinner offered in Japan was a bucket of fried chicken and a bottle of wine, with the recommendation that the meal is taken during a holiday party.
The annual Christmas lunch promotions have grown since then. However, as restaurant lines on the actual holiday frequently spill onto city streets, many Japanese buy Christmas meals from KFC months in advance.
Shared Research shows KFC Japan made roughly 7.1 billion yen ($53 million in today’s currency) in revenue in 2019.
Even though just 1% of Japanese are Christians, many individuals have embraced the commercial side of Christmas. Ishii claimed that the Japanese people’s want fueled the popularity of Kentucky for Christmas to incorporate foreign holidays into their culture.
“I guess that we’re just happy people celebrating everything that we can,” she said in the interview with Fox News.
KFC: A Japan Christmas Staple
Since she was a young girl, Naomi, a resident of Hokkaido, has eagerly anticipated her family’s annual Christmas meal: a KFC “party barrel” overflowing with salad, cake, and plenty of fried chicken, according to CNN.
“In Japan, it is customary to eat chicken at Christmas,” the 30-something Japanese citizen said.” Every year, I order the party barrel and enjoy it with my family. I like the delicious chicken and the cute picture plate that comes with it as a bonus.”
Many Japanese people prefer KFC for Christmas dinner, including Naomi, who begged only to be recognized by her first name.
Since the middle of the 1980s, life-size Colonel Sanders statues that are decorated for the holidays as Santa Claus have greeted throngs of both residents and visitors nationwide.
KFC Japan made 6.9 billion yen (about US$63 million) from December 20 to December 25 of last year, with queues out the door starting on December 23, according to data supplied by the American fast-food brand.
One of the every year’s busiest day for KFC Japan is often December 24, when sales are five to ten times higher than usual.
“As Christmas approaches, KFC commercials play on TV — they look very delicious. We order early, then go to the store at the designated time to pick up our bucket,” Naomi added. “Those who don’t reserve a bucket see themselves in long queues for hours.”
Everywhere You Look
We need to go back a few decades to understand how and why the fried chicken came to be associated with Christmas in Japan.
Japan’s economy began to boom in the 1940s and 1950s, following a time of austerity after World War II.
“Japan’s economic power was going through the roof … and people had the cash to indulge in consumer culture for the first time,” Ted Bestor, a professor of Social Anthropology at Harvard University who has studied Japanese food and culture for the past 50 years, said.
“Since the US was a cultural powerhouse at the time, there was huge interest in Western fashion, foods, trips overseas — Japan was really opening up.”
Bestor remembers seeing several foreign businesses sprouting up while living in the heart of Tokyo in the early 1970s, including Baskin-Robbins, Mister Donut, and The Original Pancake House.
As per “Colonel Comes to Japan,” a 1981 documentary made by John Nathan, the fast-food sector in Japan grew by 600% between 1970 and 1980 at this time of rapid globalization.
In 1970, KFC, then known as Kentucky Fried Chicken, joined the group by establishing its first location in Japan, in Nagoya.
According to the documentary, by 1981, the business had added 324 outlets or more than 30 per year. Additionally, it was earning about $200 million annually.
“It seemed like, suddenly, Kentucky Fried Chicken was everywhere,” Bestor recounted.
